St. Marianne Cope Shrine to dedicate garden

Jolene Cleaver jcleaver@uticaod.com

Friday

Jun 3, 2016 at 4:22 PM

SYRACUSE — A garden in Syracuse will be dedicated to a Catholic saint with Utica roots next week.

The new garden, located at 601 N. Townsend St., will be unveiled Monday and dedicated to Saint Marianne Cope by the Saint Marianne Cope Shrine and Museum. It's next door to St. Joseph’s Hospital, which Cope and the Sisters of St. Francis founded in 1869.

"The garden represents Saint Marianne’s love for nature and the flowers, trees and vegetables that she planted to add beauty to the lives of her patients, including those suffering with Hansen’s disease (leprosy) whom she cared for on the remote peninsula of Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaii," reads a museum release.

It was made possible by a gift from members of a family whose home once graced the museum site.

The donor family will be in attendance at the garden unveiling, along with representatives from St. Joseph’s Health, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities and the Cope Shrine and Museum, museum officials said.

Bishop Robert Cunningham will preside over the dedication.

Ties to Utica

Cope, born Barbara Koob, was born in Germany in 1838 and moved to Utica with her family when she was 2 years old.

In life, Cope was a member of St. Joseph’s parish, which then was on Lafayette Street. She received her first communion and confirmation at St. John’s, on Bleecker and John streets. In 1862, she joined the Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse after working a stint in a local factory.

A handful of years later, Cope helped found St. Elizabeth Hospital in Utica in 1866 and St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse in 1869.

In 1888, Cope headed to the Hawaiian Islands to set up a care system for leprosy patients. She died in 1918 in Hawaii.

Locally, Cope is memorialized as the namesake of Mother Marianne's West Side Kitchen in West Utica. Further, a shrine in her honor was set in place at St. Joseph and St. Patrick Church on Columbia Street in 2005.

In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI approved miracles attributed to Cope, paving the way for her later canonization as a Roman Catholic saint on Oct. 21, 2012.

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About Sisters of St. Francis

The Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities is a congregation of more than 400 vowed women religious whose Franciscan spirit motivates them to continue God’s work and respond to God’s people wherever there is a need. The sisters serve in 12 states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Africa and Peru.

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